


feeling super! super! super!

by sinistercacophony



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Gen, POV Outsider, Pre-Canon, csa mention, self harm mention, there's nothing explicit but a lot of bad things are alluded to
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-23
Updated: 2020-09-23
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:54:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26608576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinistercacophony/pseuds/sinistercacophony
Summary: Andrew Doe is, perhaps, one of the smallest eleven year olds Eleanor has ever seen. He is dwarfed by his classmates, noticeably behind. Eleanor suspects it’s one of the reasons he has trouble making friends, but certainly not the only one.The bad attitude combined with a tendency to get into fights at the drop of a hat can’t help.
Comments: 12
Kudos: 78





	feeling super! super! super!

**Author's Note:**

> hello i wrote this in a single night while in my andrew feelings no i did not edit it. there's nothing really bad in but i'll put some warning in the bottom notes just in case. 
> 
> title is from marina and the diamonds teen idle 
> 
> anyway i just think andrew was probably a super weird kid
> 
> also i spent like 10 minutes looking for thematically appropriate books they could be reading and was like! oh! holes! its about keeping promises that will be good! and then i realized it was written in 1998 and would have just come out and probably not been a kid lit classic in the same year so i had to change it rip

Andrew Doe is, perhaps, one of the smallest eleven year olds Eleanor has ever seen. Usually by the time they hit the sixth grade most of her students are hitting their growth spurts, the girls especially, growing up, getting bigger, learning how to be people for the first time. Andrew Doe is dwarfed by his classmates, noticeably behind. Eleanor suspects it’s one of the reasons he has trouble making friends, but certainly not the only one. The bad attitude combined with a tendency to get into fights at the drop of a hat can’t help. 

This time it starts in the middle of her second period English class. They’re just about to finish reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, a novel she picked mostly to give them a break after reading Bridge to Terabithia for their last assignment. She has Andrew seated at a desk in the front of the classroom, because if he’s in the back he tends to either sleep or start pulling hair. It’s easier to have him where she can keep an eye on him. He’s not looking at her, instead opting to use his pencil to gouge a hole through the cardboard front of his journal. She lets it go, better the paper than the desk, at this point. 

Leslie Green is in the middle of saying, “-and I just don’t think it’s fair that the kids got punished instead of their parents. It’s not like it was their fault.” 

And Andrew, who has been silent all lesson, interjects without raising his hand, “That’s stupid.” 

Leslie stutters briefly before exclaiming, “No it’s not! If they were raised that way how were they supposed to know-” 

Andrew cuts her off again without looking up from his journal, where he is still steadily scraping away at the cover, “They were bad so they got punished. They got what they deserved for not following the rules.” 

Leslie goes very red before saying, “Well! You’re not following the rules right now!” 

Eleanor finally manages to interject, “Andrew, could you please raise your hand when you wish to talk. And don’t call your classmates ideas stupid, you are free to provide your opinion without putting down theirs.” 

Andrew looks up at her. His stare is always a little unnerving, slightly too emotionless for a normal middle schooler. She tries not to let it affect her. Children are children, thinking poorly of them does nothing to help. 

“Fucking bitch,” he says, flatly. 

Well, then. There’s a collective gasp from the rest of the class. She lets a frown marr her face. “Andrew Doe that is absolutely unacceptable. Please go out into the hall and wait for me to come speak to you.” 

He shoves himself back from the desk, making a horrific screeching noise as he does so. The class has burst into a cacophony of mutters as he makes his way out, kicking the side of her desk for good measure. The door slams. 

It takes her a good ten minutes to get the class calmed down enough to start on their journal entries so she can go out into the hallway and talk to Andrew. She observes the class silently for a moment, listening to the scratching of pencils as she considers what to do with him. At this point he’s been back and forth from the principal's office to various classrooms so many times this year he might as well be a ping pong ball. Sending him back there again isn’t going to make any sort of difference at this point. She resolves to at least _try_ to talk to him, to figure out what’s going on, before resorting to having the school call his foster parents again. This decided, she goes out into the hall, shutting the door behind her as softly as she can. 

Andrew is slumped next to the door, sitting hunched over, one hand shoved under the sleeve on his opposite arm, like he’s scratching at his forearm. His shirt is black, and loose fitting, too big around the shoulders and falling down around his hands. There are holes along the edges of the sleeves that she’s seen him chewing at before.

He doesn’t look up at the sound of the door opening, just stares straight down at the ground. He doesn’t look particularly upset, but then, he never really does. The skirt she’s wearing today is loose and long enough for her to crouch down in an attempt to be at eye level with him. He doesn’t look up. 

“Andrew,” she starts, “can you please tell me why you thought it was necessary to say that to me?” 

Andrew doesn’t respond. His bottom lip is jutting out a little, dangerously close to a pout, but he still refuses to acknowledge her. 

“Andrew. Look at me.” That finally gets him to make eye contact with her. “Why did you say that.” 

He looks at her for a long minute. “Because.” 

She glances at the time on her watch, she really doesn’t have time to stand out in the hallway interrogating an eleven year old problem child. But she really doesn’t want to send him to the principal. It’s getting kind of exhausting keeping track of where he is and what he’s meant to be doing at any given moment. 

“I’ll tell you what. Why don’t we both go back into class and you can think about it, and then at lunch you can come talk to me and explain okay? You can do your journal entry then as well. Does that sound good?” 

Andrew looks down again, and the scratching at his wrist gets more intent. “Fine.” 

She stands from her crouch and he follows her, pushing himself up the wall a little. He seems a little stiff as he does it but she figures he must have just been sitting on the hard tile too long. He follows her back to the classroom, which has descended into the kind of vague chaos that unmonitored classrooms always do. She restarts the lesson. Andrew does not say anything else. 

\-- 

She’s not entirely sure what she’s going to do if Andrew doesn’t show for his lunch detention. She gave him a pass at the end of class, but Andrew resists punishment at most avenues and honestly there’s not much the school can do to control him at this point. To her surprise though, five minutes into grading papers the door creaks softly from where she’d had it cracked open. Andrew slouches in, his tiny frame looking even tinier dwarfed by his beat up canvas backpack and a lunch tray with what looks to be only pudding and tater tots on it. 

“Andrew,” she greets, trying to inject as much warmth into her voice as she possibly can. 

“Hernandez,” he responds, flat as always. He’s frowning strongly, eyebrows bunched together as he drops his tray on a random desk, dropping his backpack a second later. It hits the floor hard, and he kicks it under the desk before taking a seat. She wonders what could possibly be in there to make it so heavy. Rocks? She wouldn’t put it past him. 

“That’s Miss Hernandez to you young man,” she corrects, even though it won’t make a difference. So much of teaching is just trying even when things are obviously hopeless. 

She finishes grading her current paper, letting Andrew stew for a moment. Honestly she’s probably dreading this conversation just as much as he is, but at this point there’s not much else she can do. 

Eventually she looks up. Andrew is staring at his tray. He’s eating his pudding, but he’s using the wrong side of the spoon, dumping the narrow end in, and then licking the chocolate off like it’s a popsicle. 

Eleanor clears her throat lightly, and waits for Andrew to look up before saying, “Have you come up with why you decided to say what you did to me in class today?” 

Aaand, eyes back down again. “No.” 

Okay. This conversation clearly isn’t going to go anywhere. She tries a different tack. “You said that you thought the children in the book deserved to be punished because they broke the rules. Do you think that you deserve to be punished because you broke the rules?” 

He puts his spoon down, and just looks at her for a long moment. “Sure.” 

“Then why did you break them Andrew?” 

He gives a slight scoff, “‘Cause I wanted to.”

She bites her lip, trying to decide. “Alright, why don’t you finish eating, and then you can write your journal entry and then I’ll decide if you can go back to the cafeteria.” 

He doesn’t respond to that, just begins methodically dumping his spoon back into his pudding. 

It’s good enough for her, she goes back to grading papers. It takes about ten minutes for Andrew to finish eating. She glances up when she hears him stand to throw away his lunch tray. The pudding is all gone but there are still tater tots left. She doesn’t comment. 

Eleanor waits till he pulls out his journal, makes sure he’s writing. She grades some more papers. The only sounds in the classroom are the scratching of his pencil and the shuffle of her papers.

She’s pulled out of her rhythm by an abrupt hiss from Andrew. He’s holding the wrist he’d been scratching at earlier over the desk, staring at it like it’s betrayed him. She can’t see past his sleeve, but she can see a little droplet of red fall from his arm, landing on the paper in front of him. 

“Andrew? Are you bleeding?” 

“No,” he lies.

She steels her voice, “Andrew, I need you to please come here and show me your arm.”

He lets out what looks like a flinch at that, but doesn’t move. His gaze hasn’t strayed from his wrist. 

She tries again, “Andrew. Now.” 

He jumps, pulls his eyes away from his wrist like coming out of a trance. He approaches her desk with a mutinous look in his eyes, but still shoves his arm out in front of him. 

His wrist is so thin, Eleanor thinks, as she pulls his sleeve up. She thinks about the tater tots thrown in the trash can. She stops thinking about it. Andrew’s not bleeding badly, luckily. There’s a long cut along his forearm, but it’s mostly scabbed over. It looks like he’d been picking at it, parts that have been peeled up and are bleeding sluggishly onto his arm. 

She lets out a sigh and opens her desk, grabbing her first aid kit from the back of the drawer. “How did you get this cut? You shouldn’t pick at it, you’ll get an infection.” She puts some alcohol on a cotton swab and holds his arm firmly as she begins to dab at the wound, soaking up the blood. 

Andrew’s arm jerks in response to the application of the alcohol, but he doesn’t otherwise make a noise. “I was playing. I fell in a bush.” 

If it’s not the truth it’s a good lie. The cut is long and shallow, like something a particularly sharp branch might create. She chooses to take his response at face value. “Well, be more careful next time okay?” she says as she puts a bandaid on the exposed part. When she’s done, he pulls back his arm sharply, like he’s been waiting for her to let go. He takes several steps back, looking at her with sudden distrust. 

“Sure.” 

He sits back down. She finishes grading. The bell rings. He leaves. 

Three months later he shows up with bruises on his face so stark she has no choice but to report it to the counselor. Andrew moves foster homes, and this time he moves school districts too. She never sees him again. There are so many kids let down by the system, acting out. She tries to help, she tries to be kind, but there is only so much you can do as a single person, a single teacher with twenty five students in a class and four classes a year. Kids slip through the cracks. There’s nothing to be done. 

Eleven years later she sees a familiar face on a sports magazine at the grocery store checkout counter. It can’t be him, she thinks at first. But the longer she looks the surer she is. He’s still small. He’s standing next to a teammate with a facial tattoo who appears to have at least a foot and some inches on him in height. His face is the same, but somehow more blank. When he was a child it was impossible for him to completely shut down his facial expressions. Now it looks like he’s perfected it. They’re both wearing bright orange jerseys, but Andrew has black armbands on his forearms, from wrist to elbow. It feels like confirmation of something, to see. The photo is captioned ‘ANDREW MINYARD AND KEVIN DAY INTERVIEWED! PALMETTO STATE FOXES PLAN TO DOMINATE THE COMPETITION ONCE MORE.’ 

She’s never really been interested in sports, she thinks, distracted as the cashier starts scanning her items. 

She buys the magazine anyway. 

**Author's Note:**

> possible content warning: while its fairly ambiguous whether or not andrew is intentionally self harming at this point, he does have a cut he claims is from a tree branch that he picks at to cause himself to bleed. there are also vague allusions to other bad things but nothing is explicitly said
> 
> anyway [dumps this fic here and runs] goodbye


End file.
